August has been a cruel month for the Kennedy clan, first with the death on the 11^th of Eunice Kennedy Shriver and then two weeks later, that of Sen. Edward Kennedy.

I’m not sure, but they may have been the last living siblings of John and Robert Kennedy, both cut down too soon.

Public service was ingrained in these men and women and it continues in the ranks of their children and grandchildren. 

The outpourings of sympathy and remembrance have just started to be released in the case of Ted, who died last night after a long and brave bout with brain cancer.

Calling him “the greatest United States Senator of our time,” President Obama said of Kennedy that “for five decades, virtually every major piece of legislation to advance the civil rights, health and economic well being of the American people bore his name and resulted from his efforts.”

The praise, however, did not just come from the left side of the aisle.  Here is what Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah had to say: “Today America lost a great elder statesman, a committed public servant, and leader of the Senate. And today I lost a treasured friend. Ted Kennedy was an iconic, larger than life United States senator whose influence cannot be overstated. Many have come before, and many will come after, but Ted Kennedy’s name will always be remembered as someone who lived and breathed the United States Senate and the work completed within its chamber.”

Within our industry, Karen Ignagni, president and CEO of America’s Health Insurance Plans, said, “Senator Edward Kennedy was America’s health care champion. His contribution to health care policy is unmatched.  AHIP and its members join the entire health care community in extending our thoughts and prayers to the Kennedy family.”

I also find particularly touching this comment from the first President Bush: “Barbara and I were deeply saddened to learn Ted Kennedy lost his valiant battle with cancer. While we didn’t see eye-to-eye on many political issues through the years, I always respected his steadfast public service–so much so, in fact, that I invited him to my library in 2003 to receive the Bush Award for Excellence in Public Service. Ted Kennedy was a seminal figure in the United States Senate–a leader who answered the call to duty for some 47 years, and whose death closes a remarkable chapter in that body’s history.”

What I think is remarkable about Ted Kennedy’s life is how he grew in stature over time, how he was able to recover from the devastation of the killing of one beloved brother and then a few years later of yet another brother.  These jolts never turned into an excuse for becoming bitter or losing the compassion that motivated so much of what he did and stood for.

While he never compromised his vision-and yes, let’s be clear here that that vision was as liberal as they come-he understood that it was important to reach across the aisle to get things done, to move the agenda forward. 

Of all the remembrances that have been issued up to now, the one I like best and the one that I think Kennedy himself would like is from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who said, “The liberal lion’s mighty roar may now fall silent, but his dream shall never die.”

Who knew that health care reform was so hot a potato, so radioactive a subject, so visceral an issue that it would be the impetus for congressmen being hanged in effigy, getting death threats and being shouted down by angry mobs in town hall meetings around the country during August?

Yes, sir, there’s nothing like American mobocracy in action.  You just try to touch my health insurance, sonny, and I’ll blow your head off!

I have some advice for any congressman still courageous enough to face wrathful constituents (or those people who are not constituents but decided to drive in for the fun): If before entering the town hall meeting premises you see at the entrance a middle-aged woman sitting in a chair and knitting, inform your staff that a sudden attack of stomach cramps has left you unable to go on with the event live, but you’ll be happy to participate via teleconference from a neighboring town.  

It strikes me that it would be refreshing to actually talk about the need for health care reform, the various mechanisms that have been proposed for getting there, or how our society is going to sustain the ever-increasing costs of the current system if reform is not forthcoming. 

For certainly, if anything merits serious discussion, making changes to a business that is the equivalent of one-sixth of the GDP (at least this week) is that topic.

And maybe that’s why whatever the shouting’s about it’s not really about health care reform.   

I know there are lots of people out there who hate the government, especially the federal government. And I know this because I get withering letters and emails from a lot of them regarding this column and my blog!

What astonishes me (and to be totally truthful, frightens me too) is the intensity of the anger and bitterness that a wide swath of people in this country apparently feel regarding the perceived sins of the federal government.   I just don’t get it. 

Would they really fold up Medicare and send droves of seniors back to living at or below the poverty level?  Would they jettison Social Security?  Kill off Medicaid because after all it’s the poor that benefit from it?  Is it really OK that 47 million people in this country are uninsured?

However, to give this crowd the benefit of the doubt, maybe they really do feel as if this is the time and place and issue where they have to make a last stand.  After all, if the government takes over health care, what’s left?

There is hardly anything more seductive for people addicted to last stands than the glory that comes from making them. 

The downside to this glory is that there is no talking to people so addicted.  You can’t tell them the government, meaning the Obama administration in this case, doesn’t want to take over the health care system.  In their eyes, that’s just a load of you know what.

But, seriously, how have we gotten to the point where the administration is being slammed as having Hitler-like plans for the country? Where accusations of “death panels” hidden in legislation are created out of whole cloth and given life and credibility by media addicted to fanning the flames of controversy, no matter how spurious?

Maybe it’s all just politics as usual and the whole point is to ensure that health care reform will be President Obama’s “Waterloo,” as Sen. Jim DeMint put it.

If that’s the case, then there’s something far sicker than our health care system that needs attending to.

The attention span of the American public-never great to begin with unless a story has to do with the death or scandal of a celebrity like Michael Jackson, in which case the appetite is insatiable-is giving public figures a freer and freer ride as time goes by.

One area in which this is becoming increasingly obvious is politicians’ blatant attempt to rewrite history even as they are making it.  A choice example is Sarah Palin stating that she was not a quitter even as she was resigning as Alaska’s governor with about a year-and-a-half to go in her first term.  Yes, of course, she was going to fight the good fight elsewhere, and so therefore she could not be accused of quitting.

Now, even if everything is relative, there is still the duck test that must be passed.  And here, I’m afraid, the now ex-governor couldn’t upend the fact that her resignation looked like a duck, walked like a duck and quacked like a duck.  She quit.

Which brings me to a figure closer to the concerns of insurance people, and that is Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, who is rewriting history with assiduity.  Many people now believe that the Fed not only did very little, if anything at all, to protect consumers in the lead up to the Great Recession, but that the Fed was the prime enabler of many of the situations that nearly sank us.  In some ways, many now believe, the Fed was the three see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, speak-no-evil monkeys all wrapped up in one.

Out of control risky investments by banks, investment banks and other firms too big to fail?  Where was the Fed?

Out of control mortgage business rife with abuse and outright fraud?  Where was the Fed?

Credit card abuses by banks that have fleeced and victimized countless consumers?  Where was the Fed?

 Of course, many of these situations started before Bernanke took office in 2006.  His predecessor, Alan Greenspan of the now shrunken reputation as the financial wizard of all time, laid the groundwork for the catastrophe to come.  But Bernanke did his share of turning a blind eye too.

So now, when the Fed is being faced with legislative moves to trim its sails somewhat and the administration is pushing to create a federal consumer protection agency, the Fed is taking the line that it is the agency in the best position to protect consumers in the areas of mortgages, credit cards, etc.

Never mind that the Fed was seen to be too cozy with the banks for which it was the regulator and that this coziness was a prime contributor to the unprecedented risks that some of the largest banking institutions in the country undertook. 

The way the Fed’s reasoning goes now, as articulated by Bernanke in the dog and pony show he is conducting across the country and on the airwaves, is that because the Fed knows banks and is responsible for protecting banks, it is in the best position of any agency to protect the consumers who depend on banks.  There’s no conflict.

I think it takes a lot of nerve for the top Fed official to say that there is no conflict here when we are continuing to slog through the detritus that this very conflict wrought.

Bernanke’s actions may indeed have  pulled us back from the brink last fall, but I think it is fair to say that we would not have gotten to that brink if the Fed had been more insistent on being the regulator it was supposed to be than the cheerleader that so many perceived it to be.

Saying you’re best qualified to protect consumers when the evidence shows you didn’t is like saying you’re not quitting when that’s what you did. 

What do you say, ducky?  

Quack, quack.  I thought so.